"You'll be hearing about these events more frequently because we're heading toward the solar maximum," said Nicole L. Homeier, a scientist at Lexington-based Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER), a Verisk Analytics company.

The solar maximum is a phenomenon that happens roughly every 11 years when the sun's magnetic activity cycle peaks. During the maximum, more sunspots develop, sending flares of highly-charged storms speeding through space.

The next Solar Maximum is expected to reach its height early next year.

Astronauts and satellites are easy targets. Companies already spend a lot of time and money protecting them from a major geomagnetic storm.

More troubling is what a rare direct hit could do to our power grid on Earth.

"We are one of the groups trying to understand what would the damage actually be," Homeier said

The risk, of course, is not new, but our infrastructure now depends on power way more than ever.

And scientists are concerned that, unprepared, a giant storm could surge extra currents through the lines and overload the grid.

"If you cause permanent damage to your transformers, that's a much more serious problem," Homeier said.

Transformers are giant structures carrying enormous levels of electricity to water districts, nuclear plants, banks and ATMs, and millions of homes. They are not easily replaced. Major damage from a significant storm could shut down service for weeks, even months.

Remember how long it took to restore power to Back Bay in March after just two transformers exploded? Crews are still making final repairs.

"Is it realistic to have 100 fail? Five hundred?," Homeier asked. "Maybe it's not as bad as people are saying. What is our vulnerability to these events?"

The goal right now is better forecasting. If scientists can detect a large storm before it hits Earth, power companies could potentially take transformers offline --- a move that would produce short-term outages, but could spare the grid from long-term damage.